


Chemical — Some Gotham Vignettes

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Batman - All Media Types, 地縛少年花子くん | Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun | Toilet-bound Hanako-kun (Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Batman Fusion, Amane was afraid of Tsukasa as children in this fic, Angst, F/M, Gen, HanaNene Week 2021, I'm Sorry, Introspection, Manga Spoilers, Murder, Murderous Thoughts, Transformation, i wrote this for, in case that's a warning anyone would like to have, this is a series of vignettes, two of them have Hananene but the first one doesn't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 09:35:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29524428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: I. Amane Yugi -- the Batman -- wonders if his missing twin brother might have become the Joker.II. Nene Yashiro is turning into Poison Ivy.III. Joker's stolen Mr. Freeze's wife, Aoi Akane!  Dang it.These were written for Hananene Week 2021 on Tumblr (and other places!)  They're intended for Day 4, "AU Day."
Relationships: (I'm still so confused that no tag seems to come up for that???), Aoi Akane/Akane Aoi, Hanako | Yugi Amane & Tsuchigomori, Hanako | Yugi Amane & Yugi Tsukasa, Hanako | Yugi Amane/Yashiro Nene
Comments: 10
Kudos: 25





	Chemical — Some Gotham Vignettes

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there!!! I.... really hope you enjoy these, if you read any of them. I have no excuses -- this is just one of many potential JSHK Batman AU interpretations I've been thinking about??? Tsukasa's lines around when he's taking Mitsuba's reason in exchange for a wish have always reminded me of the Joker, is the thing...... wanting people to behave as honestly as possible, whatever that might mean, and believing Amane's truest moment/expression came about when he finally gave in to murder. So, I reference/explore a lot of those lines in this fic??? Amane and Tsukasa are not shipped here at all, btw -- Joker's got a purely platonic obsession with Batman, in this AU, meant to mirror the way Tsukasa wants to tear down what Amane builds in canon. 
> 
> I draw inspiration from lots of Gotham-y sources, here, and I really hope it came together into something fun. I'm sorry for any and all mistakes I might've made. Even though I wrote this for Hananene Week, only two of the vignettes actually have Hananene in them, so I'm.... not sure if it counts... but I'm posting it anyway, because I might regret it otherwise...?
> 
> Thank you!!! I hope you've been staying safe and doing well.

_I._

_Do You Really Think You Can Win, Batsy?_

When he was a kid, Amane Yugi hadn’t been able to save anyone. Not his parents, splattered apart on the street, pearls from his mother’s snapped necklace lost through a crusty rot-weeping sewer grate. Not his family’s butler, Tsuchigomori, who was always saving him, even now, and drawled like he was bored when Amane knew he was terrified. Not his younger twin brother Tsukasa, who he was _told_ died with his parents. If a little boy with a bullet through his skull had disappeared from Gotham General Hospital — especially a little boy belonging to the illustrious Yugi family — wouldn’t you expect people to talk about it? Wouldn’t Tsuchigomori have known? _Somebody_ , at least? 

Amane was supposed to be a detective, by now. He hadn’t been able to save anyone, as a kid, but that was everything he worked for, bled for, changed for, and he had become a different creature these days. It sounded dramatic... Tsuchigomori said it was arguably _too_ dramatic... but even so, Amane had earned himself more eerie rumors than the men who got Tsuchigomori flinching, scratching at the spider tattoo on the back of his hand. He’d made himself deadlier than the villains holding Gotham City by the throat — or... uh, that was the goal, anyway. That was the myth. People carved Amane’s Bat into concrete when they wanted to remember he was guarding them; the Bat’s signal hung in the sky over them all like a second, waiting moon, most nights, to remind criminals it was better to be superstitious, here. Better to be afraid. 

The Bat would come for you, if you hurt people that couldn’t fight for themselves... if you fed blood-smeary pearls to the sewer; if you sent little boys to the hospital with bits of skull left on the pavement behind you... _the Bat would be waiting_. Amane Yugi had drawn this Bat out of the coldest, raging parts of himself, and now he just had to become that creature again and again and again. Easy, right? Making the supernatural come true. Tsuchigomori would treat his wounds, set his bones, stitch him closed, you know. Under the earth. “Tsk. Master Amane, you can’t be so reckless,” all that. Amane would program his suit with silent calls, drawing bats out from deep caves and abandoned subway tunnels like a chattering wind. Like an extension of that “primal force” act he’d been working on for years. Amane would leave the people of Gotham wondering if he was even human, under the mask and tattered cape. “The Batman,” people said. “The Dark Knight Detective.”

But if he was really such a detective, why couldn’t Amane be _sure_ Gotham’s Clown Prince wasn’t his actual long-gone brother? Why couldn’t he promise that wasn’t his own blood, or blood too much like his, anyway, fizzing with chemicals, transformed by poison into bleached-uncanny-white clown-paint skin and wild, spinning tilt-o-whirl eyes? He _knew_ Tsukasa was dead, but all the same...

All the same, suspicions seeped in, like mold growing in the dark wet under Gotham’s floorboards. 

The Joker had looked uncannily familiar from the first time Amane saw him, was the awful truth of it. They weren’t identical, the way Amane and Tsukasa had been, before — the Joker’s bones had gone stretched and rubbery, after he boiled in that chemical vat. But there was something close, even if it was twisted out of shape by the Joker’s permanent smile. His gore-and-sequins laughter was unnervingly like Amane’s own, too, sometimes: just laughter gone wrong, like sour milk. Clean air, curdling into Joker gas that would leave you worse than rabid, clawing out your best friend’s throat and smiling, smiling, smiling. 

“I’ve got a deal for you, everybody!” the Joker crowed, across TVs all throughout Gotham, seconds before that gas started blossoming up through the same sewer grates that once swallowed Mrs. Yugi’s pearls. “Give me your minds, and I’ll show you the truth! Unless, I mean... unless somebody out there thinks it’s no good, making deals like that. Unless somebody wants to _stop_ me...!” This was how Joker liked to challenge the Bat, see. How many people can you administer antidotes to before the city falls apart again? Can you find me? Can you catch me? Or will all the air we breathe together become hysterical unraveling? 

This time, are you gonna fall too? 

The Joker struck a showman’s pose, head tossed back, arms thrown wide, and the cheerful flower in his purple-suit lapel spat acid to melt steel and skin alike. He spoke from all the TVs, crackling out of the static from every radio station. He said, “If we can’t live honestly and keep our world from burning at the same time, let’s just burn the sucker down and be done with it! Easy, don’t you think?”

Well, what do you say, Batman?

Hey, hey. 

Remember when I got the new mayor to eat the old mayor’s heart? Fun times, right? 

Remember when I went after that bright-eyed District Attorney, and Gotham’s white knight Teru Minamoto finally showed everybody how two-faced and ruthless he really was? He’s Two-Face, now, and it’s better to know, isn’t it? I always think it’s better to know.

Joker wrote messages for the Batman in blood, the same way Tsukasa used to like fingerpainting; he promised to push and push and push, until everybody showed him their truest faces. Everybody would fall, like dominos, he promised. Everybody could kill, even that do-gooder Batman. _Tsukasa_ had used to like goading other kids into fights, to see how long it took people to finally snap and shove their friends. Tsuchigomori put a stop to that, a long time ago, back when Amane had imagined he’d grow up to be an astronaut instead of a nightmare vigilante. But now — but now, when Amane dug Tsukasa’s grave up by traitorous moonlight and found a stranger there — 

It couldn’t be, right? This wasn’t... the Joker just reminded Amane of some of his earliest fears — 

Reminded him of the sick understanding that _he had been afraid of his own twin brother_ , and his parents hadn’t noticed when Tsukasa’s games left him red-eyed and bruised, and maybe if it had gone too far he might have actually killed, already, killed like the Joker said he could, said he wanted to, deep underneath it all —

 _Killed Tsukasa_ , like the Joker said, “Dontcha want to kill me?” now —

No. 

Tsukasa had died in the alley with Amane’s parents, mercilessly shot down after watching a play. Tsukasa had died and Amane hadn’t been able to save him. Tsuchigomori had held him, shaking, with emergency lights flashing even through his squeezed-shut eyes. 

Right? 

How long had a stranger been buried beneath Tsukasa’s headstone? 

This time, was Amane... was the Batman... finally going to fall, too? 

“Let’s see if you can prove me wrong, okay, Batsy?” the Joker drawled, tapping the camera lens so for a second all anyone could see was his scrubbed-clean fingertip, worn rubbery-smooth by the same poisons that transformed him. He didn’t have fingerprints, Amane knew, and his blood never showed up in any ordinary human databases. It smelled sharp and nose-wrinkling sweet, like chemical candy. If it was Tsukasa’s... _if it had been Tsukasa’s, once_.. how could Amane ever guarantee it? “You know how this goes. Let’s see if you can save me, this time.”

It’ll be fun.

_II._

_Flowers in this Ruined Place — She’s Rising to her Feet with Leaves in her Hair_

Before the super-intensive botanical biochemistry lab, her name had been Nene Yashiro. 

She still remembered who that human woman used to be: her degrees, framed on the wall of her office next to a cutesy flower-themed hat rack and a row of photo booth pictures featuring herself and her best friend Aoi Akane. Her apartment, with grimy Gotham-smog windows and ivy vines curling down the bookshelves like the crumbling stone walls of fancy old manor houses. Her hamster, Emerald Canopy, adopted after she got back from studying plants in the rainforest. The tree-canopies there still showed up in her human dreams, filtering warm sticky light, rustling like restless voices all around. She hadn’t been able to understand their voices, before, as Nene Yashiro, with pounding living blood and thick ankles people said looked laughably like radishes. But now, she felt roots winding through the sickly earth under Gotham City, and she tasted the ruined waters with them. There were vines tangled in her hair, and her flesh wouldn’t bleed. Someone cruel might have said she was more like a radish than ever, now. The thought didn’t hurt, like it might have before. 

The woman that used to be Nene Yashiro knew desire was chemical. She could poison with a kiss, if she wanted; she could draw strangers near, or leave them coughing up their guts on the sidewalks. She knew it just like Venus flytraps understood how to lure flies: in an ancient, unspeaking way. Not too long ago, Nene’d been a trusting, tittering type, blinking hopefully up at her professor even as he led her here. Used her, changed her, sold her humanity for a killer book and probably a whole crap ton of articles. Everything hurt. Everything was unmade. And now she was this: not the same Nene Yashiro, not exactly. 

Something itched between her fingers — no. _No, something was sprouting there._

The world was always growing, sinking roots in deeper, deeper. The world was always dying, poisoned by the ash in the sky, the giggling rot bleeding out from the Joker’s own Ace Chemicals. The woman that had been Nene Yashiro could taste consuming death even as she woke up in that hospital bed, after the experiment went so wrong, after the authorities found what her professor made of her. He broke her, and then he left. Terrified. How like a human, wasn’t it? Fear was chemical, too. Just like desire. Just like so much else. Chemicals... the kind Nene could bend, with her strange new biology... just stewing in fragile meat. 

When Nene laughed down at the hospital band on her wrist — such a mundane thing, here in the face of her becoming — she didn’t exactly recognize her voice. It was like movement through leaves; it was like an uncanny woodwind instrument never heard before; Aoi wouldn’t recognize it, either, would she? _Even Aoi._ Oh, God. Who had been feeding Emerald Canopy? Aoi had a key. Would she have thought to do it? Nene could hear the green flowering world whispering all around, _wanting_ all the time, and when the Batman came to interrogate her about where her professor might have disappeared to she could barely hear the resolute gentleness in his voice. Not through all the machines he used, pretending to be something beyond human. The Batman was a short man, if you stripped all the armor away, Nene could tell, now. He needed glasses, without his suit. His voice couldn’t be nearly as deep and haunted-night cold as his computers made it seem. He ground his teeth. He worried about everyone — her included — and felt guilty all the time. 

Why?

But the Batman didn’t need to worry about Nene, anymore. He was too late, and she could finally see what needed to be done. How to carve the green world away from humanity — how to give voices to the screaming voiceless, root-bound, sunlight-starved — how to use what she was, now, for something better. A long time ago... when she had been only Nene Yashiro... she used to think Batman might be quite a catch. Handsome, beneath his mask, beneath the rigid vigilante justice he showed the world. Unwavering. Unbreakable. A real knight, even here in Gotham, where the Clown Prince of Crime could turn buildings into explosive jack-in-the-boxes overnight, where sometimes botanical biochemistry doctorate programs left people wondering why touching their skin gave the nurses itchy creeping rashes even through latex gloves. It was as if Nene’s skin became poisonous as a defense mechanism, now, unless she willed it to be sweet, be soft, be calm.

She was a plant. 

She was a weapon. 

Seriously, had anyone been feeding Emerald Canopy while she was away?

When the Batman patted Nene’s shoulder... just a man, beneath the myth, beneath the Bat, that gargoyle protector, that horror with crackling electric eyes, sending Gotham’s criminals scampering afraid... Nene willed her skin not to hurt him. She smiled, chlorophyll and knowing in her eyes, wide and red like too-sweet fruit, tinged inhuman green. She told him what she knew, and when she thought she might cry she learned this new body couldn’t. Not the way she used to. Batman told her, “I’ll catch the man who hurt you. I guarantee it,” and Nene knew he’d said this sort of thing to so many people, year after year. Batman was a promise, in himself. A promise that humanity might be better, someday; that even the night could care if you were afraid. 

Batman would come and try to stop her, if Nene did what all the green world told her needed to be done. He didn’t know any better. It was nice he wanted to protect her, all the same, though, wasn’t it?

Nene had always wanted to be someone worth protecting. Beautiful. Beloved. Now, plants strained against the dirty Gotham earth, desperate to be close to her, and when she reached for _vines_ they gathered outside the hospital window, ready to carry her away. She dragged herself out of the hospital bed, and the sunlight on her new face felt like something humans didn’t have words for. But plants did. Plants always had, and plants were used, ruined, remade just as Nene had been, by humans who never thought to care. Her thick ankles were shaky, and her hair was spilling heavy down to the small of her back, and the hospital staff had already started hissing gossip about her. 

A name like “Poison Ivy” might’ve hurt Nene’s feelings, once upon a time. Before the change; before she met the Bat; before she climbed out a hospital window and the vines were there to curl around her, just as she’d known they would be. 

_III._

_The Way It Goes_

Amane Yugi... Gotham’s own Batman, but that was a closely-kept secret, of course, and only his butler knew all there was to know... got the alert that Joker and Mr. Freeze were fighting while in the middle of a fundraiser gala. He was dancing with a fancy dignitary at the time, trying to think of appropriately half-scandalous playboy things to murmur up against her neck. He was stone-cold sober, as usual, though anyone watching might have told you he always seemed to have a champagne glass loose in his hand. 

Amane Yugi was like that. Playful, irresponsible heir of Yugi Industries, he usually made headlines for stuff like crashing his yacht or funding field trips for Gotham’s youth to study the stars. Some of it was honest, some of it was a careful act. Again, only his butler Tsuchigomori ever really knew. That was how it’d always been. Part of a deal Amane made with the force that was the Batman, maybe you could say.

Amane brushed a kiss against his dance partner’s hand; Amane stumbled like he was tipsy, explaining that he needed to step away and check on other guests. When he met Tsuchugomori’s eyes across the glittering marble-and-swinging-crystal ballroom, his butler sighed. Straightened his starched white immaculate gloves, scratching at that spider tattoo of his. Bowing his head. 

Tsuchigomori knew what was happening next. Just on their own, either Joker or Mr. Freeze could destroy so much of the city in minutes, easy as a pie to the face. They’d both done as much before, the Clown Prince in the name of anarchy and truth, Mr. Freeze for love. He despised the nickname “Mr. Freeze,” truth be told, but that was the Gotham press for you. Akane Aoi was a frozen man, battling for his frozen love, hanging in cryogenic stasis until he found a cure to save her. He had trapped his wife Aoi in time, see, preserved in a moment when she hadn’t truly expected it; when she woke... if she woke... what would she think of all the blood he’d shed and left in jagged gory icicles in her name? Harvesting organs for his experiments; leaving banks full of death and frostbite as he headed out with the funds he needed to keep his life-support machines operational a little longer yet.

It was unforgivable. It was tragic, but unforgivable beyond all else. Apparently, Joker had tried to run off with Mr. Freeze’s wife, hanging cold in her soft white dress, hands gently open like she was waiting for the Akane that used to be to take them. To hold them. Joker had been messing with Mr. Freeze, goading him into horrors, because that’s what the Joker did. 

Amane vanished into the cave beneath Yugi Manor, and the Bat took his place once again. Tsuchigomori would cover for him and monitor his computers, while he was away. That was part of the deal, too. That was the way it went. Mr. Freeze’s wife Aoi would stay still, eyes unblinking maybe forever — her sweetly wavy pinned-up hair wouldn’t even sway or drift against her neck. She was trapped, though someone like Mr. Freeze would never let himself see it that way. He still thought he could save her. He still assumed he knew how she wanted to be saved. 

Amane didn’t expect help trying to break up this pointless supervillain showdown — he never did, except of course for Tsuchigomori, the only family he’d had for ages, now — but he was sort of relieved when his work car... nicknamed the “Batmobile,” thanks again to those innovative Gotham newspapers: gotta love ‘em... started weaving around vines in the road as he got closer to the center of the storm. In a rotten place like Gotham, thriving, wriggling vines meant Poison Ivy every time, and Poison Ivy was someone Amane wished he wasn’t relieved to see. She picked the fights she did to advocate for plant life; she was more of a vigilante eco-advocate herself than anything, and even though he’d dragged her off the streets a few times... even though he shouldn’t have been able to forgive her... Amane felt himself smirk beneath his mask, knowing he’d be able to tease her again soon. Ivy flushed a darker shade of green when Amane talked to her, sometimes, her plant-flesh mirroring blood the same way some orchids mimicked wasps; Ivy thanked him for being kind, even when they both knew he was trying to be scary. A force of justice and unfeeling dark. Gotham’s wicked, infamous sword, all that song and dance. 

Maybe sometimes, Amane wondered if Ivy — she’d gone by “Nene Yashiro,” once — might be the sort of person who could _know_ him. Probably not. But he almost never wondered that sort of thing about anybody, so... it was weird, stomach-turning territory, even now. He would be lying if he said he’d never lifted his mask just a _little_ ways up to kiss her on dark secret Gotham rooftops. Ivy poisoned other men just that way, he knew, but she’d never been able to poison him. Maybe it was the preemptive antidotes he’d cooked up — or maybe she’d just never wanted to?

Amane knew what he would rather believe, at any rate. The wanting might’ve been a chemical, helpless thing, but it was his just like his symbol. Just like his one, small life. 

“Batman! You’re late!” Ivy scolded, when Amane made it to that place where Gotham was... once again... tearing open at the seams. Typical Ivy. Toxic flowers blooming in her hair, a stupidly endearing earnestness in her voice. “You gotta stop Joker from breaking Aoi-chan’s glass! She could _die_!”

Mr. Freeze’s wife could die, yes. But would that really be much worse than this icy stasis her husband kept her in? Would Ivy hate him, if she knew Amane thought things like that? The Joker would say it was only natural; Joker would expect nothing else, which was why the Bat could never be caught letting anyone down. Ivy claimed she only cared about the green, growing world, but Amane knew she kept a hamster at her base, deep in that overgrown forest that used to be the East Gotham Park and Duck Pond. 

“She could,” Amane growled. The Batman’s voice, which was his own and always, always not at the same time. He could hear the Joker’s chattering teeth-bombs not far away, and his laughter careening unnaturally through the crumbling city walls. He shuddered, though he knew — or thought he knew? — Poison Ivy wouldn’t see. “Cover me?”

“Ugh. You got it.”

“Let’s go.”


End file.
